But as he strained and pulled, Valiar Marcus saw its scales pulled up, extending slightly from the skin of its neck, baring the tender flesh beneath to a blow struck from the proper angle.

Maestro Magnus saw it, too.

He produced the knife from his sleeve with a single flicking motion of his hand, as smoothly and swiftly as a skilled conjurer. The blade was small but bright, its edge deadly keen.

The Cursor drove it to the hilt into the vord’s neck. Then, with a ripping twist, he opened the thing’s throat. The vord bucked, muscles straining in sudden agony—but its jaws had suddenly lost their power.

Then the legionares arrived, swords hacking, and in a moment, it was over.

Marcus lay on his back on the earth in the aftermath. One of the legionares had gone running to find a healer and raise the alarm. The others had spread out in a line, putting their armored bodies between the gathering night outside and the two wounded old men behind them.

Marcus lay there panting and turned to look at Magnus.

The old Cursor was just staring at him, his watery eyes blank with shock, his face and white beard stained with vord blood. He stared at Marcus and stammered out a few sounds that had no meaning.

“We got to talk,” Marcus growled. His own voice sounded rough and thin. “You’re getting a little paranoid, old man. Jumping at every shadow. You need to relax.”

Magnus looked at him. Then he turned and stared at the three dead vord on the ground around them. One of them, the second to die, was still twitching, its tail fluttering randomly in the low brush.

Magnus wheezed out a laugh.

Marcus joined him.

When the healers came up with reinforcements, they eyed the pair of wounded old men as if they’d gone completely mad.

They could only laugh harder.

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 5

Running boots hammered the ground outside the command tent, and Antillar Maximus shouted the password at the sentries stationed there as if he intended to bowl them out of his way with sheer volume. Tavi looked up from his reports immediately, lifting a hand, and Maestro Magnus stopped speaking. The old Cursor gathered together loose pages from the table, resorting to holding the last several down with one hand. An instant later, Maximus flung the tent’s door flap aside, letting in a rush of wind scented heavily with spring rain.

Tavi smiled at Magnus’s forethought. No pages went flying. The old Cursor had been wounded only two days before—but he’d taken only a single night’s rest after Tribune Foss had released him for duty, and though battered and obviously stiff, he had returned to the command tent the next morning.

“Tavi,” Max said, panting, “you need to see this. I’ve had them bring your horse.”